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White Noise - Noah Baumbach
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 770
This, for a Netflix movie, was well done. The dialogue, the background ambience (watch with CC to catch it all - although, probably you won't...it may need a revisit) - snappy, sharp, incisive. This is what you get when you pay a writer. And a competent director. The difference - not quite a great movie, but so far head and shoulders above the rest it deserves mention.
And - while set in 1984, is ever more relevant today. The themes of "keep-em-distracted" and "life happens to those who don't pay attention" and the brainwashing of the populace by consumer-culture, mass media, and the - both obviousness and irrelevance of it all - well -
These themes have been resonating for a while.
Well done, and I have to admire Adam Driver for his commitment to rather less commercially spectacular films (think Annette) that make him someone worth watching. I look for the director first - but - on occasion the actors will compel me. He's one.
The Cecil Hotel
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 804
Growing up every town had one.
And always, without fail, the most dismal, decrepit and depressing bar or hotel around. Even when I was young.
The Calgary Location, open from 1912 until 2008, when - being a cornerstone of the cities drug and murder trade, was finally closed down.
View Gallery: Calgary Cecil Hotel
Then there was the Edmonton Cecil Hotel, which apparently opened in 1906, and closed in 2003 due to building and health code violations.
Video: Remembering the Edmonton Cecil Hotel
Then there was the Cecil Hotel in Lethbridge which first appears in my searches for 1953 (but probably built before and rebranded later as a Cecil Hotel); demolished in 2002
Link: Photo Lethbridge Cecil Hotel
And the Medicine Hat Cecil Hotel, which opened in 1912 and is still open, the bar at least, the building around is said to be crumbling down.
Of course, there was a Moose Jaw Cecil Hotel as well, opening in 1907 and burning down in 1975. A brief history here.
...
This list could grow formidably long. I guess the question is - Who in the hell was Cecil? I mean - I have yet to come across a congruent reason why so many of the hotels were named after this one - enigmatic? person...
Murder on the Plains - R.G. Evans
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 600
Canadian history, found as a small leaflet (64 pages) - type book, published in 1962, "Frontier Books No. 2", the kind you would pick up for your kids in gift shops or gas stations while on vacation in the day. Similar still abound. Not a bad writing style, full of the prejudices of my childhood, when Natives could be accurately described as "Bloodthirsty" and prisoners could be held in "Durance Vile". Noteworthy as while all of the crimes reference the more unsavory details of rape and murder it would be a highly dubious book to give to kids nowadays. Many of the cases were set in the Edmonton and Calgary region.
Worth all of the 25 cents I paid for it.
Incidents in the Yucatan Volume II - John L Stephens
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 720
I got lucky and a week after enquiring after it found it in the bookstore.
Similar to the first, more ruins, explorations into caves, cenotes, underground temples, references to the history of the area - from Bernal Diaz to Diego López de Cogolludo, rumors of Jean LaFitte the Pirate, of good reputation and reported upon by fishermen and locals who knew him, tales of buried treasure on the islands around Cozumel, what in this is there not to enjoy?
And the illustrations, by the accompanying travel artist F. Catherwood - perpetually in a fever yet his pictures perfectly capture the ambiance of the ruined and decaying cities.
Pastoral prints, romantic ruins overgrown with trees, pyramids, fantastic statuary, view a few of his prints by following the link above.
Exploring, the caution with which the natives regard most of the ruins and underground spaces, possibly as a consequence of bad air or gas, they are forever trying to give context to the scale of ceremonial architecture that seem grotesquely out of place with the current circumstance of the population, the customs of the current people described through the lens of a rather white filter; our author regarding them largely as the piteous remnants of Spanish colonization & brutality - which, while true doesn't realize that the real depopulation of the area took place via smallpox and other introduced diseases.
Descriptions of the vast networks of cisterns, wells, cenotes, most filled in with rubbish, but to clear a pond is to discover that it was once actually a purpose built reservoir, built at huge scales to save up the rains for the dry seasons (Climate change - even a brief period of a few years - is credited by many current archeologists as responsible for the collapse of the Mayan Empire), and always there is always the realization that they are in the presence of vanished civilization, the architecture, art, agriculture, speaks of a vast, lost empire, possessed of a high degree of sophistication.
Noteworthy is when the author discovers the "Builders Mark" on the great buildings, a red handprint, symbol (presumably) of the architect that designed the place, or chief builder, these marks still visible to Stephens even hundreds of years since their ruin, and his speculations as to it's universality - seen on horses, Tee-Pees of tribes across North America, on rock walls in Australia and in the caves of France - the hand - red hand especially - is the symbol of creation, the proof of action, an idea brought to fruition in the material world.
And there are the perpetual descriptions of the biting insects, the garrapatas (ticks) that would blacken the incautious explorer and his horse, the mosquitos and biting ants, fleas and sand fleas; all in hordes, at scales a thousand times what would have driven me mad. While (to me at least, oddly enough), there are no mentions of giant or venomous snakes, tarantulas, or jaguars, they are instead besieged constantly by the nuisance of invisible enemies that keep them feverish their entire expedition.
Finished, and there are a few other books by him, exploring in other regions, so I will have to keep my eyes peeled.
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